is it right time to replace startwm.sh with standard distrib tool? (wm wont start but no error messages in the /var/log/xrdp-sesman.log)

[cypa]

I see black square only after connect to RDP, but there is no error messages in /var/log/xrdp-sesman.log!
How do I debug what xrdp-sessman doing and what is the problem with startwm/xsession?

[cypa]

on CentOS 7 startx and lightdm work OK, but xrdp can't start wm - why?

[cypa]

finally problem was xterm wasn't installed so I've seen only block screen with cursor, but why mate-session wont start?

[cypa]

btw, I've found that we could replace startwm.sh with startx -- :11
so why use custom startwm.sh if we can use standard startx?

[matt335672]

startx attempts to start an X server I believe, so I don't think it's the right tool for the job here.

Following the code through, xinit will use /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc to start the window manager (in the absence of any user config).

On RHEL/CentOS/??? 7, this uses /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc-common, which is also used by /etc/X11/xinit/Xsession. So the effects should be the same, more or less.

On other systems, xinitrc-common doesn't exist. This seems to be a Red Hat special, or they may use other mechanisms. On Debian/Ubuntu , X11/xinit/xinitrc just calls /etc/X11/Xsession directly. So Xsession is in a different place from RH. It's all a bit of a rats' nest. I don't think the 'standard distrib tool' you refer to above actually exists I'm afraid.

If you really want to use startx, and it works for you, you can replace startwm.sh with:-

#!/bin/sh

exec /usr/bin/startx -- "$DISPLAY" >~/.xsession-errors 2>&1

so you'll get a log file.

Personally, I'm not very happy with the existing startwm.sh approach as it's quite high maintenance, but I don't have a better solution at the moment. I'd like to modify sesman to remove the dependency on assuming the user is using bash, but that's not going to help hugely.

[matt335672]

I'm going to convert this old issue to a discussion. Maybe we'll get some more useful input that way.